


Fade to Black

by zenonaa



Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-29 02:04:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3878230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenonaa/pseuds/zenonaa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Birthday?” repeats Byakuya. “But I had my birthday six years ago.”</p><p>Togami is usually not one for birthdays but then again, usually he isn't one for many things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fade to Black

“Young Master?” says Aloysius from the doorway of the study.

Byakuya turns his head, sitting at his desk, elevated by two plump velvet cushions on his chair.

“It’s your birthday,” Aloysius elaborates as he pads into the room, carrying at chest level a plate with a round cake on it.

“Birthday?” repeats Byakuya. “But I had my birthday six years ago.”

Aloysius sets the cake down beside a pile of finished homework. “People celebrate on the anniversary as well, not just on the day of their birth. You were born on the fifth of May so you have a birthday whenever it is that date and it marks when you grow another year older. That’s why you are six years old, not just one year old.”

That makes some sense so Byakuya’s eyes flit from Aloysius’s face to the cake. He studies it with a creased brow. Strings of black pipe icing wind upward from the base to the top, with additional lines that branch out and taper into coils along the way. Deliberate globules attached to these lines form the silhouettes of berries and leaves. It reminds Byakuya of a tree in front of snow, the glaze behind a swathe of white field. Aloysius’s hand crosses into Byakuya’s vision with a fork that clatters against the edge of the plate.

“This is your birthday cake,” Aloysius tells him, one arm bent so his gloved fist is balled over his chest. “I hope it’s to the Young Master’s satisfaction.”

He bows then swivels on his heel, and shuffles toward the door.

“Don’t you want any?” asks Byakuya, staring at Aloysius’s back.

Aloysius stops abruptly and his shoulders sag for a moment. Straightening up again, he says, “Oh, I’ll do fine without. It’s your birthday, not mine. I’ve had plenty of those over the years. In fact, it might be best if you don’t tell anyone about your birthday cake and just have it all to yourself.”

Byakuya looks back at his cake. He lifts his fork and rests the outer edge of one of its tines against the top, applying force as he starts to cut himself a slice. While he pushes his fork down, he glances away and meets Aloysius’s eyes. Aloysius stands in the doorway, watching Byakuya with his usual stern expression. But his eyes don’t match his face. His eyes glimmer in the dimness of the room, and his withered skin crinkles more around his eyes than anywhere else and he seems almost sad.

Before Byakuya can question him, Aloysius turns away and leaves. The door creaks shut behind him.

It must be because Aloysius is getting old. No one will want to employ him once he becomes too old. Byakuya nudges his homework to the side so he can position his plate directly in front of him. His dangling legs sway, too short to reach the floor, and he admires the cake’s design as he continues dragging his fork down it.

* * *

“My birthday is today,” Byakuya tells the woman talking to her mobile phone.

The woman, his mother, says with a simper, “Excuse me for a minute, please.”

She lowers her phone and shoots him a glare.

“Yes?” she says, seated on a jasmine colour sofa in the sitting room adjacent to the guest bedroom that she is currently staying in.

Byakuya clenches then loosens his fists, determinedly reciprocating her gaze. “My birthday is today.”

“Yes?” she says. “So?”

“Where is my cake?”

“You want a cake? What did you do to deserve a cake?”

He remembers the cake that he was given four years ago with a design as intricate as the golden embroidery on the curtains of the arched windows.

“It’s the tenth anniversary of my birth,” he says. “I should receive a cake.”

“Listen,” she says, crossing one leg over the other. “Those kinds of distractions are for ordinary people, Byakuya. Ordinary people don’t have any real achievements to be proud of so they celebrate a year of them doing nothing but existing. It’s how they entertain themselves. Isn’t that so lazy and pathetic of them, wanting a day when they’re praised for accomplishing the bare minimum? Are you those things?”

Byakuya shakes his head.

“What have you done in ten years that warrants a cake, exactly?” she asks.

He takes too long to answer.

“That’s right,” she says, wagging her finger twice. “A ten year old is far too young to be wanting a reward for existing, especially if they haven’t accomplished anything worthwhile yet. Who planted this inane notion in your head that you celebrate birthdays?”

“Pennyworth,” he tells her but Aloysius is away from the mansion this week.

“Him. Of course.” She rolls her eyes. “Honestly, he will spoil you rotten and you won’t be of any use with all those cavities. He pampers you enough as it is.”

Her fake nails patter against her phone.

“If that’s all you had to inform me, you’re dismissed,” she says and she looks away, bringing her phone to her ear. She starts speaking again but now in a softer tone, “Ah, sorry about that. As I was saying, Rin-san, he is scheduled to perform tonight. Violin this time. Oh, no, the Head is far too busy to attend the performance of a Bronze Group child.”

She laughs with a shrill undertone.

The sound grates, not at all like the notes he plays on his violin that evening. Byakuya’s fingering rivals those that have studied the instrument for more years than he has existed, and polite applause follows each piece. He glimpses his audience twice during the entire performance but neither time is long enough for him to discern any faces. His audience exists as a single shadow, wide and riddled with protrusions and holes. After he concludes his final piece of the day, they swim around him in the parlour and their voices thrum in his ears.

Various foods have been placed on a long table for everyone to enjoy. Byakuya wanders along parallel to it, up and down, not particularly hungry but also not keen on pottering about either. Three laps later, he picks up a broiled tofu bite by its skewer and retreats to a corner of the room that contains an empty armchair with burgundy leather and a golden frame.

He hears snippets of conversations.

“... only nine or ten...”

“... youngest, apparently...”

“... rather handsome boy, isn’t he...?”

“... looks like his father...”

Byakuya nibbles at his piece of tofu. He can almost pretend that this is his birthday party, like what the contemporaries at his school invite him to and he attends because making connections is important.

“You’re Byakuya, aren’t you?” comes a voice from beside him, belonging to a boy that can’t be too many years older. Nothing about him sticks out, not his dark hair parted to the side nor his shirt that strains slightly over his stomach.

“That’s my name,” says Byakuya because the boy might be the son of someone important.

The boy offers his hand. When Byakuya’s arm twitches, the boy snatches up his hand and shakes it.

“What group are you in?” asks the boy, letting go.

Byakuya narrows his eyes, on guard and not understanding yet.

“I’m in the Bronze Group,” the boy tells him with a small smile.

Recalling what his mother said earlier, Byakuya says, “So am I.”

The boy takes a bite of his skewered beef and shishito pepper.

“What do those groups refer to?” asks Byakuya.

“It’s an unofficial thing really. I’m a Togami as well, you know. Same dad.” The boy swallows. “Well, I’m not a Togami yet. I’ve got my mother’s surname like you must have.”

Byakuya nods.

“So like I was saying, there are three groups.” The boy holds up three pudgy fingers. He chews a bit as he talks. “Gold. Silver. Bronze. In a couple of years, we’ll all compete against each other in a series of challenges that our father sets and the winner gets to be the only heir to the Togami Conglomerate. Those considered likely to earn that title are placed in the Gold Group. Below that is the Silver Group and everyone else is in the Bronze Group. People in the Bronze Group hardly ever reign victorious. I’ve researched all of the potential candidates and you’re the youngest apparently, so you’re the least likely to win.”

The boy munches on a chunk of shishito pepper.

“Who decided that?” asks Byakuya with a scowl, arms folded across his chest. If he wasn’t wearing grey shorts and a sleeveless jumper over his white shirt, he might have intimidated the boy. But Byakuya’s outfit just reinforces the fact that he is a child.

“History decided that,” replies the boy, finishing his skewer and flicking his tongue. He peers at Byakuya curiously. “By the way, do you know what happens to all the losers?”

Byakuya remains silent.

“They’re disowned,” the boy says with a smirk on his lips and a glint in his eyes. “They lose their status and their name and have to live as a nobody. They lose everything. They don’t even have a name. Isn’t that scary?”

Instead of waiting for Byakuya to respond, he waves his skewer and saunters over to the table to get himself more food.

Hunching his shoulders, Byakuya eats his tofu and lets the rest of the room fade to black.

“... only...”

“... youngest...”

“... boy, isn’t he...?”

“... like his father...”

In the end, Byakuya Togami shakes his father’s hand. 

* * *

The bag that Touko Fukawa meant for Byakuya to have swings from her elbow as she walks alongside him on their way to the incinerator. Byakuya trains his eyes forward as they descend the stairwell together. Makoto Naegi doesn’t follow, loitering near the door of the library that Byakuya retired into after he rejected an invitation to his own birthday party. That’s Makoto’s problem though, not Byakuya’s, because Byakuya never asked any of them to throw him a birthday party. They shouldn’t have deluded themselves into thinking that because they were all in the same class, he was ordinary like them. Someone like Byakuya Togami has no need for birthday celebrations.

Touko’s bag shudders and the present within it thumps rhythmically, all the way down to the ground floor. When she steps off the bottom stair, he stops and jerks his head toward the bag.

“Fukawa, tell me what’s in there,” he says. He doesn’t normally indulge people like this but she talked back to him when he initially told her to throw away her eyesore of a bag, so he finds himself somewhat... intrigued. That word fits. Everything is usually dull and predictable. Besides, she waited outside the library for him, even longer than Makoto did, so Byakuya thinks he can be lenient and give her a chance to prove herself to him.

Her face lights up and she delves a hand into the bag.

“You don’t have to show me. You can just use words,” Byakuya says but she already pulled something out.

He raises his eyebrows at the viridian notebook that she holds toward him.

“I gave that to you,” states Byakuya, arms folded over his chest.

Touko smiles, staring at his face as she strokes her thumb across the hardback book's spine. “Y-You gave it to me on my birthday and asked me to write you a story in it for your birthday for you to appraise... so I did.”

Byakuya did do and say that. Even if he doesn’t celebrate birthdays like normal people, his classmates do and he had, at the time, decided to join in so he could make the occasion somewhat beneficial to him. Doing so was second nature. “There is a story in this?”

“Yes. A story that’s just for you to peruse.”

He reaches for the notebook, which Touko gives him more than happily. Tucking it under his armpit, he says, “Of course, the rag that you were storing it in will still be thrown into the incinerator as instructed.”

“Of course,” she echoes, and she tacks on a “Byakuya-sama”, fluttering her eyelashes like the fire that consumes the cotton bag.

Once the bag has been destroyed, he dismisses Touko and goes to his room to read what she wrote. During the two months that elapsed since he lent her the notebook, she managed to fill a hefty number of pages with neat handwriting. Byakuya sits at his desk with his feet flat on the floor. A few pages in, he crosses one leg over the other and props his chin in the palm of his left hand. He expected a romance, the genre that Touko is best known for, but she penned him a detective story. It includes a subplot that hints at a believable relationship between the protagonist, Takehiko, and his assistant, Jun, even if Byakuya is indifferent about it until they combine into a powerful force by the end, but the story centres on a murder that he solves three quarters of the way through.

Still, what she wrote wasn’t bad. Not at all. His mouth hangs ajar as he reads her story for a second time, focusing on the writing style. Takehiko narrates from a limited third person point of view and sounds little like Touko. Though curt in what he says, he is largely impersonal in his observations of his surroundings and other people. By the bottom of the first page, Byakuya envisions himself in the story, with a crust of dry blood under his nails and a mask frosted over his face by crisp evening air and by something else, something beneath his skin, and he smiles to himself about Jun as the story progresses. He rubs circles on the desk with his index finger.

Jun, with her dialogue and mannerisms reminiscent of her author, finally makes Byakuya realise at the end of the second reading who the two people are that Touko based Takehiko and Jun on and he widens his eyes. His finger freezes. His thighs pulse and he would have stormed out of his room so he could throw the notebook into the incinerator, if he hadn’t felt naked and too indecent for anyone to witness. Tasting a bitter film at the back of his throat, he shoves the notebook into his drawer and slams it shut. That night, a stray ‘Byakuya-sama’ drifts through his lingering thoughts and he tries to remember the last time that someone regularly called him by his first name in the way Touko says it. When dissolves into If and he falls asleep first.

Monobear’s morning announcement wakes him up. Byakuya spends longer than usual in the shower, spraying his skin with shards of cold, but he enters the cafeteria in a neutral mood. He eats a slice of stale cake with his coffee at an otherwise empty table. The flat layer of icing on top bears no picture, no drawing, plain as plain, a strip of white. Stony-faced, he peels it off and consumes the rest of the cake.

“Good morning,” chirrups Makoto as Byakuya sips coffee. Keeping his tone light, he adds, “It’s a shame you missed your party, but everyone left your presents in the laundry room so you can go get them whenever you want. Um... Togami-kun?”

“I don’t care. Those types of distractions are for people who don’t have anything worthwhile to feel good about so they throw parties and get together with others who can lick their wounds,” says Byakuya, twisting away from Makoto. A russet glow encircles the surface of the coffee in his mug.

“That’s not true,” Makoto replies, his nervous smile dropping off his face. “Everyone appreciates you, Togami-kun, and we want to show you that.”

“Well, you ought to appreciate me, so at least you’re doing something right. Either way, I don’t care for your silly rituals.”

“Birthdays are a good opportunity to reflect on what you’ve done and how you’ve changed since the previous one, and they’re a chance to appreciate the people you know. Happy birthday for yesterday, anyway,” says Makoto and footsteps mark his departure.

Byakuya looks vacantly toward the far wall, rubbing circles on the table with his index finger. He reads Touko’s story again that night. 

* * *

“It’s my birthday so I should decide how I celebrate it,” Byakuya tells the faces at the same table as him in Future Foundation’s cafeteria.

Aoi and Yasuhiro glance at each other. Kyouko furrows her brow.

“That’s true,” says Makoto and he trails off, which is just as well because he talks too much in general. Makoto talks so much, in fact, that Byakuya sometimes finds himself thinking about what Makoto tells him even when they aren’t together. Honestly, there are times, few though they are, when Byakuya winds up thinking about him nearly as much as he thinks about a certain other person.

“Then there’s no point to this conversation,” replies Byakuya, having spent a lot of thought on his decision. His fingertips tap the table. “The helicopter is scheduled to leave tomorrow morning and all the necessary paperwork has been filled in. I just felt like telling you so you wouldn’t wonder where I am.”

“You really want to see her in person again, don’t you?” Aoi pipes up quietly, fidgeting.

Byakuya frowns.

“There are some things that can’t be expressed in a video call,” he says. 

* * *

While braids do suit Touko, her hair worn down has its own charm. Her clothes lack that charm and need replacing, torn and filthy, but he acknowledges why they are in that condition and temporarily allows it. Otherwise he would not have let them stand so close together in her living room, especially with Komaru Naegi in the neighbouring room. The sounds of cooking utensils clattering as Komaru bakes and her occasional cough suffice in masking the specifics of their conversation.

Touko starts to speak, “Byakuya-”

He touches his thumb against her lips.

“That will do,” he says, sliding his other hand down to her waist, “Touko.”

Her face flushes. “You s-said my...! H-Happy birthday, B-Byakuya,” she says, muffled, and his thumb slips into her mouth.

Byakuya cups her chin. She only manages to suck his thumb a few times before he pulls it out and tilts her head back. Saliva slicks his thumb and he sighs, twitching it twice. In some ways, she hasn’t changed much.

“For my gift, I was thinking about a sequel to that story you wrote me for one of my birthdays,” he says with the ghost of a grin on his face. “The one with Takehiko and Jun.”

“I... I can do that. I haven’t written it yet, but I have ideas on where I want it to go,” she tells him in a whisper.

He drags one of his feet closer to her.

“Show me,” he murmurs.

Touko rises onto tiptoe. 

* * *

“It’s ready!” calls Komaru as Touko’s heels return to the floor.

* * *

“I’m not much of a baker,” Komaru apologises and she scratches at her chin, looking remarkably like her older brother in that moment. She already cut the cake so hands out paper plates with slices on them.

The sticky texture suggests that the cake was undercooked but Byakuya eats it, icing and all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday, you fictional nerd
> 
> also to twogami, who is also a nerd


End file.
